Member Avatar for deucalion0

Hey there guys, i needed to design a vlan for part of my university coursework. I was hoping that some of you pros here can have a look at it and give me your opinion, it was very difficult to research and design.
I was wondering if the native vlan which is the main network with around 1000 hosts on the is the management vlan also? A thing I was not sure about either was security, there is just too much to think about, so if anyone can give me advice on anything that would be great!

Here is the diagram I made:

many many thanks!

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by vkumarg89

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Short answer: do not use the native VLAN as your management VLAN. The native VLAN is the place for untagged 802.1Q frames on trunks and is often the default VLAN on many platforms — that makes it a poor choice for carrying sensitive management traffic. Use a dedicated management VLAN or, better yet, an out‑of‑band (OOB) management network that carries only device management IPs (switch SVIs, console servers, RMM, monitoring hosts).

For ~1000 hosts avoid one giant flat VLAN. A single /22 will technically cover ~1,022 hosts, but large flat broadcast domains hurt performance and policy control. Break the user space into smaller VLANs (per floor, per function, or per department), keep consistent subnetting (for example /24s per access VLAN), and do inter‑VLAN routing at the L3 aggregation/core so you can apply ACLs, QoS and summarization.

Practical security checklist and design points:

  • Use a small, dedicated management VLAN/VRF (or physical OOB) and never put general users on it.
  • Restrict access to the management VLAN with ACLs and central AAA (TACACS+/RADIUS), use SSH/HTTPS and SNMPv3, disable telnet/HTTP.
  • Harden trunks: explicitly set the native VLAN to an unused VLAN on both ends, restrict allowed VLANs on trunks, and avoid using VLAN 1 for anything important.
  • Enable DHCP snooping, Dynamic ARP Inspection and IP Source Guard to block common layer‑2 attacks.
  • Harden access ports with port security and/or 802.1X, enable BPDU guard/loop protections, and shut unused ports.
  • Keep syslog/NTP and config backups, and place firewall/policy enforcement at the routing layer for inter‑VLAN flows.

Example (conceptual) snippet to illustrate a dedicated mgmt SVI and an ACL:

vlan 99
 name MGMT

interface Vlan99
 ip address 10.255.99.2 255.255.255.0
 no shutdown

ip access-list standard MGMT_ONLY
 permit 10.10.0.0 0.0.255.255

Good start on the diagram, . ’s link is a useful CLI primer; ’s note about locking MACs is on the right track (port security/802.1X); and ’s focus on firewall/AAA is exactly the right direction — treat management separation and access control as a first priority.

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Member Avatar for jingda

About security what are you referring to, is the firewall protection good and secure. From your link you posted your project is quite big, that means you have ti take note of a lot of thing. Still monitoring your it, will give you more feedback and advise over time. Godd luck

Member Avatar for jingda

Good link benmar

Member Avatar for deucalion0

Thanks very much for your advice, you have been most helpful!
:)

commented: you are welcome +0
Member Avatar for vkumarg89

Hii Deucalion0

Hope i am able to help you .

As Benmar gave a link you cud see how to configure computers on their respected vlans irrespective of their physical location .

For security purposes you can add "mac-sticky " command to vlan configuration ,this would take care of authorized access of by new devicesin your network . If you want to secure your systems you cud add authentication commands

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